Separate /home after install

[Tsarevich]

Is it possible to make a new partition, set the mount point to /home after install?

Will I have to move the files or will they automatically?

[daark.child]

Its possible, but you will have to move any existing directories on the old /home to the new /home manually.

[Tsarevich]

Which's reliable:

1. Make new partition, move files there, delete old home, mount new home?
2. Make new partition, mount new home, copy files there?

[devils casper]

Make a new partition, move files to partition using cp -a command. Edit /etc/fstab file and add an entry for new /home partition. Reboot machine. New /home partition will be mounted.
Make sure to use -a option with cp command. Its for preserving permissions.

[Tsarevich]

Either of the -r and -a option do not copy symbolic links. There are a lot of these links in Themes, .whatever (preferencs) folders, so I cannot copy them. Any way I can mount a folder on a partition as /home? I have lot of space on a drive which I want to utilise. I do not want to break the partition.

[Jonathan183]

I think cp -a should copy links as well, I just tried it and it worked for me. You can cp the information and then modify /etc/fstab to mount /home to the partition and test things work correctly. There is no need to remove the /home information on your root partition unless you are short of space.
Did you try doing the cp and mounting the partition to /home to check the links?

[devils casper]

cp -a command works fine for perserving permissions and symlinks. Do not remove /home folder under root ( / ) before tesing /home partition as suggested by Jonathan183.